Study Says Sex Can Help Your Career, But Not In That Way

A recent proposal in Sweden may offer a different kind of benefit to employees (Photo: Shutterstock)

Not happy at work? Maybe you should go home and have some sex. That's what a study just published in the Journal of Management suggests. That was also the thinking of councilman Per-Erik Muskos, when he recently proposed giving the 550 employees of Overtornea, Sweden, a paid hour a week to leave work to have sex.

Keep in mind that neither suggested using sex or sex appeal to get ahead in your career. That's a completely different topic, which will not be discussed here. In both of these cases, the question was how could sex at home with your significant other affect how you perceive and perform at your job.

For the study, four researchers (Keith Leavitt from Oregon State University, Christopher M. Barnes and Trevor Watkins from the University of Washington and David T. Wagner from the University of Oregon) followed 159 married employees for two weeks. No, not "followed" in the creepy hiding-in-closets-and-under-the-bed way, but "followed" meaning giving the employees three brief online surveys (in the morning, afternoon and evening) each work day. Only one question in the survey asked about sex: “how many times did you have sexual intercourse between the end of your work shift yesterday and right now?” with negative numbers and "I can't tell" being unacceptable answers. There was also a group of questions from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) short form to assess the person's mood, five questions asking respondents to rate their job satisfaction and three questions to evaluate how immersed the person was in work that day.

The researchers used Amazon Mechanical Turk to recruit study participants from a wide variety of industries in the Eastern Standard Time (EST) time zone of the United States. They limited their study to married people who live with their spouses because previous research had found that married couples actually have more sex than single people. (Yes, some of you married folks may be shocked to hear this.)

The results? Sex is good. When employees had sex at home, they tended to be in better moods the following day, which in turn led to greater "engagement" at work and more job satisfaction. This effect seemed to last up to 24 hours and occurred in both men and women, regardless of overall marital satisfaction and amount of sleep.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. Have you ever seen those movies or television shows when a character arrives at the office beaming and super-productive after a night of doing the hokey pokey? Happiness at home and at work are interconnected like pork and beans. If one's broke the other may make you broke. Nasty bosses and employees may not be doing enough of the nasty. And so forth...

Of course, the study had limitations. It was just one sample and did not thoroughly examine what else was happening in the employees' lives. For example, something else could have made the employee happy (e.g., the Chicago Cubs winning a game), which then led to sex. Also, this doesn't necessarily mean that you can blame your job performance on your spouse. However, the results are in line with the known benefits of sex. For example, sex can lead to the release of dopamine and oxytocin, which can improve your mood and, as my previous piece in Forbes relayed, possibly even your memory. (Do you remember this?)

Have you ever seen that person enter the office with an extra bounce in his or her step? Gee...wonder what happened last night... (Photo: Shutterstock)

All of this lends support to Muskos' proposal, news of which quickly spread throughout Sweden and then around the world. This was roughly around the time President Donald Trump said during a February rally in Florida,“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” ...although it is still not completely clear to what specifically Trump was referring. Muskos felt that the sex break would help improve the health and morale of municipal employees, although he didn't clarify how the town government would make sure that employees would not use the break to do other things such as work, play Pokémon GO or read Forbes articles.

Is it realistic to institute breaks for sex in your workplace? Maybe not for all work situations (e.g., if you are flying a commercial plane). But in general, workplaces may want to help employees have better work-life balances. After all, working employees too hard can have the reverse effect in more ways than one. And pounding people with work can...well, you get the picture.